1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a conversation control apparatus, conversation control method, and programs therefor, and in more detail relates to a conversation control apparatus, conversation control method, and programs therefor, for carrying out conversation control constituting a reply to a caller originating a call, using environment recognition information for a caller's facial recognition, position, characteristics and voice recognition etc.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, with increase in speed of digital signal processing developed and advanced as information processing means centered on computers, high level integration LSI manufacturing technology, and ultrafine high precision manufacturing technology for disk media such as DVDs as a background, conversation control technology has been provided making it possible to give machines natural sounding voices, and to understand words spoken by a person and to make an appropriate reply. An example of this type of conversation control technology is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-358304.
With this type of conversation control technology, speech of a user (speaker) is acquired via a keyboard or the like, and conversation control is carried out based on only the content of the speech.
On the other hand, there is also provided technology for carrying out behavior control in a self-sustaining manner based on information other than speech content, such as voice and image of a user, etc. Technology for carrying out this type of self sustaining behavior control is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-111981.
With this type of conversation control technology, making a reply considering factors other than speech content, for example, user expression, characteristics, age, etc., is not carried out.
Also, in technology for carrying out behavior control in a self sustaining manner based on information other than speech content, there is behavior control based on only recognition results obtained from outside, but with this technology past speech content is not taken into consideration, which results in unnatural behavior control. For example, in the event that the result of recognition obtained from outside is information saying “angry face”, even if the conversation up until that point indicated a good relationship, behavior control will be carried out based only on “angry face”.
The object of the present invention is to provide conversation control technology that carries out conversation control based on both speech content and conversation state, and information obtained from outside, and makes a more natural response.